Racks for carrying luggage and other articles on an exterior surface of automobile vehicles and the like have become quite popular. Typically, such racks and carriers are mounted on the vehicle roof or rear trunk lid, although other surfaces are sometimes used, such as the upper surface of a cap or canopy for a pick-up truck.
There are many prior art patents on such luggage racks and article carriers. One general type rack employs raised side rails mounted substantially above the vehicle's surface on fixed stanchions with relatively flat intermediate skid strips or load supporting slats therebetween. Bott U.S. Pat. Re. Nos. 26,538 and 26,539 are examples of expired patents of this kind. Ingram U.S. Pat. No. 4,225,068; Kowalski U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,239,138 and 4,279,368 and Mareydt U.S. Pat. No. 4,616,772 are more recent examples disclosing luggage racks and carriers of this general type. Because the side rails are elevated above the roof surface, they create undesirable wind resistance and noise and because they are unsupported between the stanchions, their load carrying capacity is somewhat limited.
Another general type of rack or carrier that has met with some commercial acceptance employs relatively flat, low-profile slats along the sides on which stanchions connected to cross bars or article tie down members are mounted. Bott U.S. Pat. No. 4,516,710 and U.S. Pat. No. Re. 32,706 along with their issued parent patents and many of the numerous references cited therein are illustrative of this style rack. Other U.S. patents disclosing racks and carriers of this type are: Ingram U.S. Pat. No. 4,244,501; Kowalski et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,372,469; Rasor et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,406,386; Cronce U.S. Pat. No. 4,448,337; Stapleton et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,469,261 and many of the references cited in these patents. The side slats disclosed in these patents are generally characterized as being substantially wider than they are high and have a substantially flat, horizontal upper article carrying surface.
For use with vehicles having roof surfaces with a more rounded contour, Bott U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,684,048 and 4,754,905 disclose carriers having supporting side slats with non-horizontal lower mounting surfaces and upwardly opening channels for receiving generally horizontally disposed liners with flat inwardly directed flanges for supporting articles and movable stanchions connected to cross bars. In these carriers, loads are transmitted down through the channel-shaped metal liners and into and through the plastic supporting slats which are relatively expensive to fabricate and limited in their strength capabilities.